They do accelerated life testing in some cases. Baking and shaking them. Salt spray, heat, UV etc etc. And try to extrapolate the results to an estimated MTBF.
From: Kurt Fankhauser Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2017 9:29 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] Manufacturer MTBF ratings and actual lifespan of product Where do these MTBF ratings come from by radio manufacturers? Are they just made up numbers the manufacturer "hopes" that the product can achieve or is actual testing done to get to these numbers? I thought i seen a radio once with a 90 year MTBF rating. How they hell can they determine that? The components in the radio didn't even exist 90 years ago. If a radio manufacture states in the spec sheets that the radio has a 40 year MTBF rating but then also admits that after 4 years expect to have problems due to a design flaw, what does that mean? Is the expected MTBF rating only good in a "lab environment" under "ideal conditions"? Seems to me the MTBF is just marketing fluff and actually doesn't mean crap....
